40 games in and fatigue is losing...badly. No fatigue teams are in the top 2 in the mixed divisions and on 1 fatigue team is .500. There are still some fatigue players leading the individual stats however.

Ok..we are past the all-star break and bad is blowing away fatigue. It seems that true fatigue (that below 80%) is almost impossible to overcome. There are still some individual players on the fatigue teams in the top 25 players (by OPS and WHIP), but even they have now dropped off.

Final stats are in for the league and we have learned that fatigued pitching and fielding are awful...just awful and fatigue is certainly working in these areas. Hitting is still unresolved, as we had several very fatigued hitters perform decently (a few even made the top 25). Breakouts are below:

Posted by contrarian23 on 6/17/2013 3:51:00 PM (view original):I would say this data is very very conclusive that fatigue seriously impacts performance, so hopefully that issue is put to bed.

Pitching and fielding are severely impacted by serious fatigue (something I never disputed). However, I think teams of 90+ fatigue position players and 90+ fatigue pitchers will outperform teams that have no fatigue.

If the 90+ fatigue players are of significantly better original quality than their unfatigued competitors, I have no problem with that outcome. I would find it very unrealistic if performance dropped off precipitously at low levels of fatigue.

Posted by contrarian23 on 6/17/2013 3:51:00 PM (view original):I would say this data is very very conclusive that fatigue seriously impacts performance, so hopefully that issue is put to bed.

Pitching and fielding are severely impacted by serious fatigue (something I never disputed). However, I think teams of 90+ fatigue position players and 90+ fatigue pitchers will outperform teams that have no fatigue.

I still wholeheartedly agree and that is the point of this thread. Players at 92-99% do not drop in performance nearly enough to offset resting them. It's still a flaw in the system. The test league showed that EXTREME fatigue does not work as a strategy (although the individual players in the top 25 show that even players at less than 50% can still hit and pitch a bit), but it still doesn't quash the discussion about the slightly fatigued hitters (and to a lesser extent pitchers) still performing at high levels.

In the test league I had my bad players playing at 97% for most of the season after the all-star break and not one of them dropped off in performance.

I'm still not seeing it. My read on the data above is that the hitting leaders are overwhelmingly dominated by un-fatigued players. Does the presence of a couple of fatigued players among the leaders mean that the model is fundamentally broken, or is it just a testament to random variation? My conclusion from the data posted in this thread is that the fatigue penalty is working just fine for hitters.

I'm looking through some of the team stats now...I am more convinced than ever that the fatigue system does not need to be changed at all. Most of the fatigue teams had really really good players (and remember they were facing bad pitchers most of the time...either just plain bad pitchers on half the teams, or fatigued pitchers on the other teams) - and the offensive numbers are way way down. Yes, you can find the occasional exception (but these are usually the players with the smallest delta over their real life PA), but for the most part guys are down 75+ points in average, 100+ points in OBP, more than that in SLG.

These guys got absolutely killed, and that's just comparing them to their actual OPS, not even factoring in how bad the pitching was (and therefore how much higher their expected OPS would be if they were not fatigued).

Again...I agree that the fatigue system works for hitters and pitchers from 92% down...it's the 93-99% that is broken. In this league, all of the fatigued players were BELOW 60% for the entire season. They should have gotten killed by fatigue (and they did). The league tested true fatigue and proved it worked.

What it did not test was the 92-99% range that I still feel is not penalized enough. IF 99% acted like 89% then I wouldn't type another word about it.

Assuming that's true - and I am not convinced that it is - how would you propose addressing it without having the unintended consequence of punishing owners who do a good job building an effective offense?

Posted by contrarian23 on 6/18/2013 4:12:00 PM (view original):Assuming that's true - and I am not convinced that it is - how would you propose addressing it without having the unintended consequence of punishing owners who do a good job building an effective offense?

I know that an offense that over performs and is so effective that it racks up extra PAs is an issue since these players will get below 100 faster. Part of this answer lies in the fact that WIS has already tried to correct this by capping PAs/game for fatigue in the system and by giving us the free 10% before you hit 99 with a hitter.

My first thought is to draft extra PAs for your bench so you can rest a starter here and there. Yes, I know you are going to say this is not the most ideal because you have to spend money on bench players and that could effect your ultimate offense. But I still contend that if your ultimate offense includes multiple players playing between 92-99% that you are gaming the system currently by taking advantage of a fatigue flaw.

My second thought is to be liberal with your "rest when up/down by X runs in the X inning" settings, maybe setting this to 4 in the 6th or something. Yes, I know you are going to say that this limits your managerial options and you really hate pulling your starters because you can lose a lead late or give up the chance to come back in a game...but it does address your concern.

My third thought would be to request WIS change the PA/game cap on fatigue to the average PAs a team generates per starting position over the course of a season. Looking at the example from our league above, the team with the most runs was the Dilligafs with 1739. They had 7,474 PAs (6545 ABs + 852 BBs + 77 HBP) so let's round up to 7500. (7500/162) / 9 = 5.14 PAs per spot in the batting order per game. In MLB in 2012 there were 184179 PAs for an average of 6139 PAs/team. (6139/162) / 9 = 4.21 PAs per spot in the batting order per game.

If WIS capped fatigue levels at 5 PAs per game, you would alleviate excess fatigue for games where you score a lot of runs.

Or, if they used this information to appropriate fatigue, that would give you 810 PAs per batting order slot if they set 5 PAs/game per position as the max for a player who played 162 games. If WIS prorated this for the number of games the player played in real life, you could control fatigue pretty easily. If your player appeared in 120 games, he would get up to 600 PAs.

Another thought would be to take real life PA/G data for each player and set their fatigue on this stat. If your player had 500 PAs in 120 games, he would fatigue based on 4.17 PAs per game. This would work similarly to the in game fatigue for pitchers based on their IP/G. Doing fatigue by PA/G would be a change in the fatigue system, but might work better.

Those are some thoughts...what about yours? It is still my opinion that players playing effectively at 93% who are a full 17% over their real life PAs is broken. So is playing a player a full 162 games when he only played 120 in real life...I still think that if WIS fixed this via harsher fatigue penalties that it would make the sim more realistic.

Again...I agree that the fatigue system works for hitters and pitchers from 92% down...it's the 93-99% that is broken. In this league, all of the fatigued players were BELOW 60% for the entire season. They should have gotten killed by fatigue (and they did). The league tested true fatigue and proved it worked.

What it did not test was the 92-99% range that I still feel is not penalized enough. IF 99% acted like 89% then I wouldn't type another word about it.

We agree that 93-99 fatigue doesn't affect hitting enough (if at all), and that severe fatigue affects hitting, pitching and fielding to the point that it isn't a viable strategy. I'm not sure that 80-92 fatigue affects hitting enough. Under the current system, I think the ideal team uses their good pitchers at 95+ and their position players at 90+ (with a DH being lower than that).